Terry Greene
Mr. Manwell
Eng 3
Period 3
4-14-14
AMDG
Failure
British economic interest began in the 1600s when the East India Company set trading posts in three different Indian states. What would India have that Europe would want? The simple answer to that particular question is its spices. Asia was like the Middle East and spice was like the oil of present day trading, and India was one of the most productive markets in the world at that time. During the first hundred years of European presence, the India’s ruling Mughal Dynasty kept the western powers and European traders under control. However, by 1707 the Mughal Dynasty began to fail and in 1757 the East India Company became the leading power in India.(Embree 176)With this shift in
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E.M. Forester’s novel, A Passage to India, demonstrates the relationship between two very different cultures and their inter-workings as a society, and how they fail to peacefully cohabitate the same country.
A Passage to India, inspired by Forester’s experience in India, focuses on the relationship established by the British colonies and the Indians in Chandrapore and draws attention to the difference between the European and Indian way of thinking. In this particular novel, Imperialism dominates both cultures’ ways of life. Imperialism favors the British better than the Indians, and white superiority motivates the main characters. The novel explores the ways in which imperialism informs the human value, or rather, human character under The British Raj, both its derogatory and unifying effects. The ghost of the Colonial Other comes to permeate all the relationships within A Passage to India, creating a gulf over which positive human contact tries, but ultimately fails, to jump. (Lehmann 85) Although the two groups have a different thought processes, the two extremely diverse ethnicities share the same pessimistic outlook on the other The Indians have a pessimistic outlook on the evolution of the
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Interracial relationships almost always fail do to the social milieu of the two races being separate and not equal. The most important relationship in the novel is between Dr. Aziz and Cyril Fielding. Their friendship only happens only because each individual had an open mind and both are very naïve; however each individual’s naïve attitude clashes with the other. Fielding is an outsider among his fellow peers because he does not view Indians as inferior. He truly believes that people from different cultures can come together and get along. “The world, [Fielding] believed is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and intelligence.” (Forester 44) This overly optimistic heavily romanticized attitude counts as half the reason why their friendship fails. The other half is Aziz’s negligence. Aziz believes that a long lasting friendship could happen if the two are racially and socially equal, however he knows deep down that this will never happen. “In every remark [Aziz] found true meaning, but not always the true meaning. And his life though vivid was largely a dream.’’ (Forster 73) Aziz is a dreamer who lies to himself constantly and deliberately chooses to deny and ignore all the signs that their friendship will never endure. Aziz also tries to achieve the same intimate relationship that he has with Cyril Fielding with other English
After Europeans arrived in East Asia via the Indian Ocean, trade in the Far East changed dramatically moving towards a globalized economy. Between 1450 (39 years before the arrival of Vasco Da Gama) until 1750, the levels of trade in Asia reached a new peak; initial changes came in the form of the addition of new goods; and the eventual addition of colonization into the Indian Ocean Trade Network ultimately turned traditional “trade” into imperial relations. However, the importance of raw materials and the main Asian groups involved in the Indian Ocean trade network largely remained constant after European exposure until the start of British Imperial rule of India. Throughout these three centuries, economic superpowers rose and fell, leadership changed, and cultural exchange was highly prevalent, but the general philosophies, and religions of the societies involved in trade remained intact, resulting in far more positive interaction than in the New World.
Between the years 1600 and 1950 british used the land of India to their advantage. During this time, British expansion was at its prime. As time went on Indian culture slowly morphed more and more into British culture. British Tradition became the new normal for the people of india. Most of the indian inhabitants worked as plantation slaves, where they spent their life starving and sweating. They starved because the crops that they harvested were sold by british plantation owners. Cash crops like Tobacco and wheat were harvested and sold because they were in high export demand. India was one of many huge sources of british income because the terrain was ideal for farming. Not only that but they had all of the indian people there to do their
“Englishmen.. have given the people of India the greatest human blessing - peace.” (Dutt). Merely coming to India in the 1600s to trade, the British East India Company established trading outposts. After ridding of French influence in India during the Seven Years’ War and having Indians mutiny against British rule, Britain gained full control of India. India was under the imperialist control of the British until their independence in 1947.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.
By 1750, imperialistic powers had begun to seize control of many regions through South and Southeast Asia. India fell under control of the British East India company and later became a British colony. Many other areas fell under the control of the Dutch and other European powers. These areas were exploited as sources of raw materials and a place to send European manufactured goods. As in Latin America, few industries rose in Southeast Asia and India. Around World Wars I and II, struggles for independence began there too. When India finally did gain independence, it went through the same problem as Latin America and the rest of Southeast Asia. India’s cotton industry had been destroyed by the flow of cheap British manufactured textiles and the government held monopolies on many trade goods such as salt. Gandhi had supported the limited Westernization of India and the revival of its past industries. The Third World status of many Southeastern nations is beginning to change as trade shifts into the Pacific Ocean. and the Asian Tigers continue to gain power and
" India was where the riches of the world came from, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. The British needed to dispel the threat of other Europeans in Africa to maintain control of India, and they did so efficiently. They quickly gained control of both the major sea routes to India and then turned their eyes to the rest of the continent. Whether the British were trying to foster public support or prevent another nation from becoming a threat, all British actions in Africa were directly or indirectly linked to India. The British were motivated by their desire to become powerful, and they skillfully combined enterprise and conquest to create a globe spanning empire centered around the wealth of India.
The Effects of British Imperialism in India One could approach this topic from two points of view: the British and the Indian. One could choose either party and find very different opinions. When British colonizers first arrived in India, they slowly gained more and more control in India through many ways, the most prominent being trade and commerce. At first, they managed India’s government by pulling the string behind the curtain. However, soon they had acquired complete rule over India, converting it into a true British colony.
As many people know, Imperialism has shaped the culture and customs all over the world. Imperialism is the dominance of one country over another politically, economically or socially. Western culture can be seen in all parts of the world; from Asia to Africa, to the Indies and the Americans. The downside of having the bits of western culture all over the world, is how it got there. Western influence was forced upon places in Asia, specifically India, Indonesia with a hellacious price; lives and poverty.
The Indian Ocean proved to be the mine from which the Europeans, in particular the British mined the resources to fund their hegemony over the world. Before the Europeans appearance the Indian Ocean was by all accounts a largely peaceable and open trading route for south east Asian states. The Portuguese were the first intruders, beginning to arrive in the first half of the sixteenth century, they recognised immediately how lucrative the existing trade was and could be. Soon after, attracted by the knowledge of the Portuguese’s profit, the Dutch and the English arrived. They brought with them an aggressiveness most of the existing Indian Ocean trading system had not witnessed before.
Imperialism in India British imperialism in India had many positive and negative effects on both the mother country, Britain and the colony, India. Many people would argue which effects were more prominent in these countries, and some would agree that they were equal. But in both cases, there were actually both. In India, the British colonization had more positive effects than negative. For instance, when the British colonized India they built 40,000 miles of railroad and 70,000 miles of paved roadway.
"All the leadership had spent their early years in England. They were influenced by British thought, British ideas, that is why our leaders were always telling the British "How can you do these things? They're against your own basic values.". We had no hatred, in fact it was the other way round - it was their values that made us revolt." -Aruna Asaf Ali, a leader of the Indian National Congress. (Masani, quoted in Wood, 32, 1989)
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
Silver, Brenda R. “Periphrasis, Power, and Rape in ‘A Passage to India.’” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction 22.1 (1988): 86-105. JSTOR. Web. 4 Mar. 2011. .
the European era in Indian history. The lucrative trade in spices of Malabar - in modern Kerala - had tempted
India was the first major Asian civilizations to fall victim to European predatory activities (Duiker 31). With conquering India, the British had various purposes behind it. Their main purpose was to achieve a monopolistic trading position (The Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India). The second purpose was the control of India; this was a key element in the world power structure, in terms of geography, logistics and military manpower (The Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India). When the East India Company continued to trade under the British, huge armies were created, largely composed of Indian sepoys (Marshall). The armies were used to defend the Company’s territories protect the Indian states (Marshall).